Cryptographic methods may be used to protect confidential information in computer systems and other electronic devices. For example, an encryption operation may be performed, in which a series of transformations as specified by a chosen cryptographic algorithm are performed on a plaintext input data (e.g., a sequence of bits representing text, numbers, intelligible characters, etc.) using an encryption key (e.g., a sequence of bits) to produce encrypted data (cipher text). It is generally practically unfeasible to determine the unencrypted plaintext data from the encrypted data, without knowing the cryptographic key. If the cryptographic key is known, a decryption (sometimes referred to as inverse cipher) operation may be performed on the encrypted data to reproduce the corresponding plaintext (unencrypted data).